Ira DeMent, judge and civil rights advocate, dies

MONTGOMERY -- U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent, who in his career as a judge and lawyer was instrumental in revamping Alabama's foster care, mental health care and prison systems as well as setting the standard for prayer in state schools, died Saturday at the age of 80.

DeMent's son, Charles DeMent, said his father died after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease.

During a career that spanned more than half a century, DeMent left a lasting stamp on Alabama.

As a U.S. attorney in Montgomery, he prosecuted landmark mental health and prison reform lawsuits for the Justice Department. As a federal judge, he outlawed school-sponsored prayers in DeKalb County public schools, and he ordered an overhaul in the state's treatment of abused and neglected children, particularly an 8-year-old boy identified only by the initials R.C.

"He was a strong advocate for civil rights during a difficult period in Alabama's history," U.S. Sen. Jeff Session, R-Ala., said in an interview Monday. "One of the most obvious characteristics of Judge DeMent throughout his career was that he was just utterly fearless."

Sessions said he was a young attorney in Mobile when he became an admirer of DeMent's work as U.S. attorney in Montgomery.

"They were constantly doing important things," Sessions said.

"He was committed to justice," Sessions said. "No matter how poor you were or how powerful the opposite party, you could be sure you'd get justice in his court. He had a real commitment to the average citizen and he expected the powerful to follow the rules.'

DeMent's commitment to help the powerless began before he was ever appointed to a federal post.

As a lawyer in private practice, DeMent filed a federal court suit in 1969 alleging gross mistreatment of juveniles at the state Department of Youth Services' Boys Industrial School at Mt. Meigs.

"Mount Meigs was a children's concentration camp," DeMent said in an April 2002 interview. "It had dependent children, neglected children and delinquent children all mixed in together. It worked them in the fields picking cucumbers, and if they didn't pick their quota, they got beaten. ... They were kept until they were 21 and then simply released. They had no programs of any kind for the benefit of the children. And it was segregated, of course."

As a result of the suit, the school was integrated, crowding was eliminated and minimal standards were set.

"It was the case that planted the seed that bloomed into the mental health case," DeMent said.

The mental health case was one of the early cases that drew national attention to DeMent as a U.S. attorney, a position to which he was appointed in 1969 and 1973 by then-President Richard Nixon. DeMent's prosecution of the case led the late U.S. Circuit Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., then the federal district judge in Montgomery, to order sweeping reforms in Alabama's mental hospitals. In 1972, Johnson ruled that civilly committed mentally ill and mentally retarded people have a constitutional right to treatment or training that will improve their condition.

At the close of the case, Johnson told the lawyers in his chambers "that this one case alone was sufficient to justify DeMent's tenure as U.S. attorney," then-Assistant Attorney General David L. Norman of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division wrote in a memo praising DeMent's work.

'Arguing to a court'

The late Ruth Johnson, Johnson's widow, in a 2002 interview said DeMent considered Johnson his mentor and tried to follow in his footsteps.

When Johnson's civil rights rulings in the 1960s aroused intense hatred throughout Alabama, DeMent was a constant friend of the family, she said, and when the Johnsons' adult son years later took his own life, "Ira was devastated."

"I think he's arrogant and self-centered and probably domineering, but he's the best friend I've ever had," she said.

DeMent's relationship with Johnson did not start out with mutual admiration.

In an interview at the time of Johnson's death, in 1999, DeMent said that, in his first case before Johnson, the judge threatened to throw him in jail. DeMent was arguing over a ruling Johnson had made on a point of law, and Johnson asked him if he was being facetious.

"I said, 'No sir, but I'm right,' and he said, 'Well, I'll put you in jail if you continue to argue with me," DeMent said. "That's when I learned the difference between arguing with a court and arguing to a court."

Princeton University recognized DeMent in 1976 with the Rockefeller Public Service Award in management of conflict.

John D. Rockefeller III, in a letter to DeMent, wrote that ".¤.¤. one of the great strengths of our society is the spirit of public service and the underlying importance of individual initiative. It was because your own work so typifies these qualities that you received the award."

But not all of DeMent's cases won him universal praise.

Controversial case

Perhaps the most controversial decision DeMent made in his more than a decade as an active federal judge, from his appointment in 1992 by former President George Bush until his semi-retirement in 2001, was his 1997 injunction against school-sponsored prayers in DeKalb County public schools.

DeMent issued a wide-reaching opinion in 1997 that struck down a state law allowing prayer during certain events at public schools and barred DeKalb County educators from leading and sponsoring Christian prayers and other activities.

Then-Gov. Fob James protested the decision, and conservative groups decried DeMent -- a GOP appointee and lifelong Republican -- as a liberal activist. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned a key part of DeMent's ruling and allowed voluntary student prayers, but it rejected James' claims that only the state had control of the issue.

While that case was widely discussed at the time, what was less known was a habit DeMent, a Methodist, had of keeping a Bible on his desk for frequent reference. "That Bible's got more yellow stick-ems in it than a legal brief," said Ron Wise, a former law partner of DeMent's.

"He's not concerned about what people say. It doesn't enter into any decision he makes," said Wise, who practiced law with DeMent for about six years.

"We never shied away from a case because it was controversial," said Wise.

DeMent's personal discipline went back to his days at Marion Military Institute, where he graduated in 1951 as a distinguished military student after graduating from Phillips High School in Birmingham in 1949.

He served in the U.S. Army Infantry in Germany from 1953 to 1955, and in the Army Reserve and then the Air Force Reserve until 1989. He rose to the rank of major general and was awarded the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, the military's highest peace-time award. He previously had received the Legion of Merit.

Services for DeMent have been set for Wednesday at 1 p.m. in Greenwood Cemetery in Montgomery.